


home sweet, no sweet home

by astralscrivener



Series: abc's of klance [8]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Black Paladin Lance (Voltron), Canon Universe, Crash Landing, Established Relationship, M/M, Mild Blood, Minor Injuries, Not Canon Compliant, Red Paladin Keith (Voltron), Stranded
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-27
Updated: 2019-07-27
Packaged: 2020-07-21 05:57:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19996993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astralscrivener/pseuds/astralscrivener
Summary: h is for homelessness.Keith doesn’t take off his own helmet until he hears what he thinks is the sound of Lance taking his off, first. Then he sets his helmet on the ground next to his feet. Cups his hands around his mouth.Screams bloody fucking murder.The universe has a cruel sense of humor.





	home sweet, no sweet home

**Author's Note:**

> nobody dies everyone relax
> 
> remember that era of fics after season 1 where keith and lance get stranded on a planet together
> 
> yeah i don't either i wasn't here for that
> 
> but i heard about it!!! sure sounds nice
> 
> anyway this is like that but later on
> 
> title from _rootless_ by marina, formerly marina & the diamonds
> 
> important but mostly irrelevant timeline information: diverges from canon after s2 where the clone bullshit never happens (so shiro's just. out there somewhere) and they don't find matt or romelle or krolia either so it's just the castleship crew minus one, keith never joins the blades so like. the s3 lion setup continues. kinda. that part's explained. kinda
> 
> **trigger warnings for mild injuries, cynicism/pessimism/fatalism/do these words mean what i think they mean i dunno i'm a fake english major**

**.:homelessness:.**

The sky after the storm looks like a painting.

Bright orange clouds, streaked through with the rays of a sunset and the flow of rivers of molten gold, carried across Keith’s line of sight by a breeze vented from the depths of hell. And he supposes the breeze, the bed of hot red rocks he’s been sprawled out on for the last few hours—he supposes they’re the only downsides, to this whole moment.

If he ignores the castleship explosion.

If he ignores Red’s mangled body and the rip in his head that landed him here, and Red several dozen yards away in a heap.

“Hailing Team Voltron.”

Keith’s voice is a whisper. It’s all he can manage, after the screaming that tore his throat earlier. It’s a different sound than the buzz of static from his comms that’s accompanied him for several hours now, a buzz he can’t bring himself to turn off. If he does that, there’ll be a ringing in his ears, and he’ll have to come to terms with the fact that he’s alone.

Again.

“If anyone can hear me,” he carries on, voice growing hoarse every time he tries to raise it, and he lowers it again and hopes whoever stumbles across his message can make it out, “it’s Keith, I’m alone, I don’t know where I am, I’m hurt.”

He doesn’t sound very much like a leader, barely even a warrior. This is the weakest he’s ever heard himself, the most vulnerable he’s ever allowed himself to be. Even in the Marmora Trials, with his world swimming and consciousness slipping away fast, he’d been at least a little bit cheeky. So he’s grateful he wasn’t the one in the Black Lion directing that last mission.

Then his heart twists as he remembers who was.

“Red’s busted,” he carries on in a strained voice, if only to distract from the places his thoughts are going. “He’s not flying any time soon. My connection to him’s weak. We’re stuck on a hot planet, and no, the irony’s not lost on me…”

Keith closes his eyes. Things are slightly better, here in the dark, but it’s no cooler. It’s no less painful to feel jagged rock digging into his flightsuit, dozens of sharp little stones. There are tears, definitely. Blood, probably—he remembers stinging in the rainstorm he couldn’t bring himself to move out of, as he let the rain wash over him, watched the droplets steam until his visor became a mess he couldn’t see out of.

“It’s really rocky,” he says. “Reddish-brown…I think I saw mountains in the distance. I haven’t been able to check. Everything hurts.”

He could probably get up and walk if he tried, but he doesn’t want to. Even trying to raise his head sends pain shooting through his neck, and his whole back aches. He might be concussed, although his helmet might’ve saved him from that, or worse injuries.

“I’ve been transmitting my suit’s SOS signal for the last few vargas.”

His head’s still fuzzy, trips on the conversion from an Earth hour to the Altean equivalent. Maybe he should’ve just stuck with hour, given that four of the others are human, anyway.

“If anyone hears me…if there’s anyone nearby…give me a sign, _something_ …”

He waits a minute—a sixty seconds that he counts out in full. Shiro told him once that counting is a way to calm down, and counting for an entire minute keeps his breaths from coming sharp and fast, keeps the lump in his throat from swelling until he can’t talk past it.

He gets no response.

He’s not sure what his chances were, anyway. The teludav had been the main target of the attack on the castleship, and the last time it was compromised, their machine that _generated their freaking wormholes_ , the team had been scattered across the universe, each left to their own devices. Then, he didn’t know what he would’ve done, if he’d ended up solo. He’d been lucky—his big brother had been there, and though Keith had been pulling more weight, it was a comfort to have _someone_ there with him.

If he’d been in Pidge’s position…

_Endure and survive,_ was what he’d told himself. He’d gone it alone before and could have no problem doing it again.

Except this time he has attachments. This time he knows losing any one of his teammates is going to destroy his heart in a way he won’t be able to repair, and he’s used to relying on them. He let them in, let them take care of him—

_Vulnerability is not weakness._

_Friendship is not weakness._

_A soft heart is not weakness._

Sometimes he still needs to take the time to remind himself of that, and it all comes crashing over him now. Part of him wishes that he could blame the rain for the sudden wetness on his face, but he’s been fully sealed off from the environment from the moment he was thrown out of Red’s cockpit, and it’s long since stopped raining.

_Deep breaths._

Keith takes a few. Breathing hurts but isn’t fiery—bruised ribs, probably, but nothing broken, no punctured lungs. Probably. Hopefully.

“Hey Red,” he calls weakly, “wake me up in an hour, alright?”

He should get up and get moving, because he’s already been lying here for some time, and if sleep claims him he doesn’t know for sure it’ll ever release its hold, but he’s utterly exhausted and hasn’t had a proper sleep since long before the mission. Maybe if he rests, things will hurt less. He move without wincing, can actually get to his feet and start walking and do something useful.

There’s a flicker of heat somewhere in Keith’s chest he knows doesn’t come from his own injuries.

Red’s response.

“I’m gonna get us out of here somehow,” Keith says. “I promise.”

Another lick of heat. Searing.

Pained.

“I know,” Keith says. “It’s gonna be okay. I’ll rest, and then I’ll do…something.”

Truthfully, he’s not sure he even gets as far as speaking that last part out loud. His heavy eyelids stay shut and the rest of his muscles are already gone, from not moving for so long, and he’s out as soon as the last of his words leave his lips.

* * *

_“Hello? Can anyone hear me?”_

Keith opens his eyes to darkness.

His suit’s retained all of the warmth from the sun earlier that day, but it no longer feels as though he’s in an oven being cooked alive, as he scans the area around him. Stars fleck the sky overhead, twinkling against a blanket of black. Whatever this planet is, it mustn’t be very populated. Or at least, this area isn’t. Because Keith sees what must be its entire galaxy from his vantage point on the ground, swirls of a painter’s brush against a wide open canvas.

“That was more than an hour,” he groans, blinking a few times, finally pushing himself into something of a sitting position, palms flat against the ground, arms supporting most of his weight. He moves slowly, back still protesting with every inch. His neck is even worse off, as he turns to look at Red—

—Red, from whom he hasn’t gotten any reply.

“Red?”

_“Keith?”_

It isn’t Red who answers, and Keith stills at the sound of a voice breaking through the static of his comms.

_“Please tell me I didn’t imagine that.”_

Keith’s mouth is at a disconnect with his brain. It takes him a few seconds to process the previous few, process that Red’s not responding, not even an ember in his chest, but—

_“Please.”_

—Lance.

Lance _is_ responding.

“I’m here,” Keith breathes out. “Lance, I’m here.”

_“Keith.”_

Lance’s voice is a flood of fondness and relief in his ears, and in Keith’s mind’s eye, he can see Lance’s shoulders slumping as the weight of anxiety slides right off, can feel the phantom of his touch after a long day as he collapses into his arms and buries his face in the side of his neck.

“Are you alright?” Keith asks, and tries to refrain from whipping his head around as he turns, sweeps eyes over the area again, searches for a spot of blue and white armor—

_“I’m okay, but my comms have been busted for almost a full day,”_ Lance answers. _“Suit’s kinda banged up, but better it than me, right?”_ A nervous laugh twists Keith’s heart. _“But nah, I’m…I’m alright. Black’s…not. I think she protected me, because we crashed_ hard _, but_ _…I’m okay. Physically, y’know, but…that was…that was something.”_

There’s a hard swallow on Lance’s end.

_“What about you?”_ he asks. _“I think I heard_ something _a while ago, but_ _…it was all caught up in the static. I couldn’t make out any of it, but I think it sounded like you.”_

Keith hesitates, considers hiding the full extent of his injuries, considers toughing it out for the sake of keeping Lance from panicking while he can’t do anything about it, but then sighs, speaks quietly: “Everything hurts, and Red’s not responding. At all.”

His voice goes more hoarse than he meant it to, as he looks at the twisted heap of his Lion, and the tightness in his chest returns, his throat starts closing around some lump or other again—

“It’s bad,” he whispers. “We…we must’ve taken some hit or something in the crash, I don’t know, it’s…it’s all blurry…”

He has three distinct memories: the swarm of fighters, Galra and space pirates alike, targeting the castleship in that last battle, and the explosion, a blinding light in his windows in the seconds before the teludav went, too, and caught them all in some poor excuse for a wormhole; being sucked through the wormhole, space rushing by and bending around him in a rainbow of colors trying to kill him, while debris tumbled through the space around them and probably tore up Red, probably caused the gash in the cockpit; and waking up here, aching.

“I got sucked right out of the cockpit,” Keith continues on. “I’m…I’m in pain but I’m functional.”

_“Stop talking about yourself like you’re a machine,”_ Lance says, sharp voice blunted only slightly by concern.

“Old habits die hard,” Keith replies, and can’t keep the amusement out of his tone as he leans back until he’s fully on the ground again, arms thrown out to each side—a starfish staring at a sea that cast him out.

_“How much pain are you in and what kind of pain are we talking? Can you feel all of your limbs?”_

Keith wiggles his fingers and toes, raises both legs and both arms before letting them flop back down. “Yeah. It just aches. Everywhere. I’m probably one big bruise underneath my armor.”

_“Purple, but not in the way we all imagined,”_ Lance quips, and draws a small laugh out of Keith.

He can’t put into words how much he appreciates this, how much he cherishes having someone like this: calm in the face of an emergency, serious but still able to put a smile on his face, a leader the team deserves.

“Sure,” Keith says, and then the comms go quiet for a moment.

_“Where are you?”_ Lance finally asks. _“Other than background static, our connection seems pretty clear. Clearer than it would be in this situation if we were on different planets, and judging by the fact that I haven’t heard a thing from the others…maybe you’re nearby.”_

The thought hadn’t even crossed Keith’s mind.

“Lance, you’re a genius!”

_“Am I now?”_

Keith laughs, full-on and a little bit wetly this time as he sits up and ignores the pain that shoots through his back. “Yes, you _are_.”

Getting to his feet, too, is painful. Even with his sudden spike in giddiness, Keith grunts and grimaces, apparently loudly enough for Lance to hear. 

_“Wow, you really_ are _gonna be one giant bruise under that suit, aren_ _’t you?”_

“Yeah,” Keith manages.

_“Guess I’m gonna have to kiss you better once we get back to the cas…oh.”_

Unlike last time the wormhole freaked out and flung them to different corners of the universe, there is no castleship to return to, which means reuniting with the team is going to be slow-going, painstaking, and Keith doesn’t want to deal with it right now as he shoves those thoughts aside and squints in the dark.

The ground is uneven underneath his boots—rocks. Maybe it would be gravel for a giant, but it’s a little bigger than gravel for him, and probably what tore into the exposed portions of the back of his flightsuit. It occurs to him then that his armor’s probably dented back there, too, and the jetpack’s probably shot to shit. No canyon-jumping like last time.

“Is it night for you?” Keith asks as a means of diverting the conversation.

_“Yeah,”_ Lance answers a little more somberly than before. _“You too?”_

“Mm.”

_“Even better. At least we’re on the same side of the planet, then.”_

Same side of the planet, possibly closer than they both think. If Red were responding, maybe Keith would already know how close is. But there’s barely a flicker of life inside of him, something that clenches Keith’s stomach in the worst way as his eyes land on his Lion, again.

Keith doesn’t know how the Lions started, whether supposed to be viewed as purely machine or purely sentient, a weapon or their own being. It’s probably some mix of the two, but where Keith once leaned heavily toward machine, he now leans the opposite direction. Red may be deadly, destructive, made of metal. May be design to keep him protected first.

But Keith can’t help but feel he’s failed in some unspoken duty to protect Red, too.

“Yeah,” Keith says, voice hollow. “It’s, uh—it’s rocky, here. I’m…walking in a bed of rocks. And there’s some standing water, from the rain earlier. It was all red, kinda like clay, but…it’s dark. So. You know. It’s all kind of purplish now.”

He turns in a slow circle, tries to get the full scope of his surroundings. In the dark, it’s harder to tell what’s in the distance, although he thinks he makes out the jagged outline of mountains, one shade darker than the sky.

“There might be mountains nearby,” he says. “Kinda hard to tell, and I don’t think my wrist light will reach far enough.”

_“What direction are the mountains in, and how much of them do you think you see?”_

“What?”

_“Like, the peaks, or the whole thing? From where I’m standing, I’m getting mountain peaks in the distance, ah, like, southwest of here, but not much else. I think I’m up on like, another mountain, or something.”_

Keith interfaces with his visor. In the top left corner, four letters appear, with an arrow. The arrow blinks a few times, spins around in one direction and then the other as it tries to right itself. With the rest of his suit banged up and systems scrambled, he’s not sure how accurate the reading will be, but his heart skips anyway when the arrow finally stops spinning almost halfway between the W and the S.

“Southwest,” he answers. “I’ve got a little more than peaks.”

_“Okay, okay.”_ Lance’s voice is getting quicker, breathier with barely-concealed excitement. _“Same direction, you’re seeing more than me, which means to the…north…north…okay, to the northeast of you, there’s probably gotta be another hill or something. Assuming we’re looking at the same mountains. I’ve got an idea. Do you know if you have any flares?”_

Flares. As far as he knows, their suits have no function that would produce a flare, and he’s not sure if he could get his bayard to unlock something like that. As it is, he’s only ever unlocked two swords—one with the red bayard, and one with the black bayard. The only other place he can think of that might have flares is a survival kit, which would be stored in…in Red.

Keith’s throat goes dry.

“I don’t think so.”

And Lance must understand.

_“Okay, okay, uh…”_

“…Let me try something,” Keith says. “Take off your helmet, I don’t want the comms to interfere with this.”

_“What?”_

“Just for like, thirty seconds.”

_“…Alright.”_

Keith doesn’t take off his own helmet until he hears what he thinks is the sound of Lance taking his off, first. Then he sets his helmet on the ground next to his feet. Cups his hands around his mouth.

Screams bloody fucking murder.

Keith won’t be surprised if his throat starts bleeding soon, given how much he’s abused it in the last day or so, as his scream echoes around him, as he scoops his helmet back up and swiftly shoves it on his head, just in time to catch Lance’s voice, frantic.

_“Was that_ you?! _”_

Keith’s heartbeat ratchets up. “So you heard it.”

_“Yeah, are—you did that on purpose, right? Like you didn’t just get attacked out of nowhere? You’re okay?”_

“I’m okay, I swear,” Keith says. “But—you _heard it_. Almost right away.”

_“…You’ve gotta be close, I…you’re hurt. I’m coming to you, okay? Uh, just…fuck, alright, take your helmet off and stay where you are, okay? I wanna try shouting back and forth at each other, and if I can follow your voice, and…and you hear me respond…this can’t take more than like, ten minutes, right? I know—I know sound travels farther at night, for whatever reason—”_

“Sound wave refraction.”

_“Yeah, yeah, I may have zoned out during the waves unit. But you’ve…you’ve still gotta be close. I…I don’t want to think about…”_

_If you_ _’re not close. If this whole thing falls apart and I get myself lost with no way to figure out how to get back to my Lion._ Keith knows the words Lance doesn’t speak, and his heart twists.

“I understand,” he says. “I’m taking my helmet off now, alright? If I can’t hear anything from you in the next twenty seconds, I’m putting it back on.”

_“Alright.”_ Lance’s voice shakes slightly, the sound rattling Keith as he takes off his helmet.

He first anticipated a long nightmare, days without seeing or hearing from the team, but Lance—he’s here. He has to be, if he heard Keith’s screams. Sure, he’s hurt, his Lion’s shot and not responding, and he’s going to have to do something about it, but he’s not alone. Not fending for himself.

Keith is suddenly acutely aware of how dark it is, how dangerous the terrain is, what sorts of accidents could befall Lance if he slips with his helmet off, and Keith nearly puts his helmet back on to demand that maybe they just do the simple thing and _shut their comms off_ , but then he worries that if they shut their comms off their suits will die and their comms won’t turn back on, and—

“Keith!”

It’s a bit fainter than he expected, but he hears it nonetheless.

“Lance!” he shouts back automatically, despite his heart climbing into his throat. He has to remember, he can’t leave Lance in silence, can’t have Lance thinking this won’t work when they’re _this close_ —

“Keith!”

And it goes back and forth; every few seconds, one flinging the other’s name into the void. Keith finds himself walking toward the source of Lance’s voice despite Lance’s warning to stay in place, but he at least tamps down on the urge to _run_ to him, because every few shouts, Keith can’t help but hear pain. Hear suffering. Hear Lance crying out Keith’s name in a desperate bid to find relief for his torture, and even though he _knows_ that’s not the case, he worries anyway.

As Lance’s voice gets closer, Keith picks up on movement. Footsteps on rock, on whatever undergrowth is managing to twist its way up from the ground, on whatever water’s still standing. Another worry crosses his mind, fleetingly—that this is a bounty hunter, one of probably thousands out looking for the Paladins, one that’s found them out in this far edge of the universe and is using their voices as both guide and cover.

But then Keith hears his name again and rocks sliding and suddenly Lance is tripping over his own two feet down a hill Keith hadn’t seen before and barely catching himself as he lands, and he’s looking up and—

And Keith runs.

“Lance!” he cries out, throwing his helmet aside, and Lance does the same and then charges forward and they crash and barely manage to keep from hitting the ground. Their armor clacks and scrapes as they throw arms around each other and Keith briefly ignores all of his injuries as he buries his face as much as their suits will allow into the side of Lance’s neck.

“You’re okay,” Lance whispers in seeming disbelief. “You’re really okay, you’re okay…”

He draws back almost as quickly as he and Keith crashed into each other, hands reaching up to frame Keith’s face, cup his jaw, brush the hair out of his eyes and clear of his forehead as he inspects for damage. Then it’s to hold both of his cheeks as he pulls Keith in for a kiss.

Keith doesn’t hesitate to kiss him back.

He tilts his head to fix their smushed-nose issue that Lance truthfully didn’t seem to have a problem with, and then wraps his arms around Lance’s waist and tugs him as close to him as their armor will allow. And Lance sighs into it, sighs in sheer relief and lets all of his muscles relax with the knowledge that they’re both okay, they’re together again, and as long as they’re together again, they can figure all of this out…somehow.

“You’re okay,” Lance breathes again when he pulls their mouths apart, only to press their foreheads together and close his eyes and laugh incredulously.

“We’re okay,” Keith confirms, ignoring the aches setting in again, now that his brief surge in adrenaline is wearing off. “I’m here. It’s alright.”

His voice goes croaky, but it’s alright; he’s watching tears make their way down Lance’s cheeks, quiet but there nonetheless. Keith lifts a hand to wipe them away with the pad of his thumb and wishes more than ever he wasn’t in his jumpsuit, that he could feel Lance’s skin beneath his own. But Lance leans into his touch anyway, removes a hand from Keith’s cheek to place it over Keith’s hand and interlace their fingers from behind.

It is, in general, a shitty situation. Keith’s bruised and cut up and has an unresponsive Lion. He’s crash-landed on a planet far away from the rest of the team, with no answers over the comms. He’s got no castleship to return to. But the universe has given him one reprieve in the form of his boyfriend. At one time or another the universe has stolen his mother, his father, his brother, his team, and this one time it’s taken pity on him and given him someone back. Time and time again being stranded alone—this one time, not so.

He doesn’t know how long they stand there, holding each other, drinking in the other’s existence, before the exhaustion breaks over Keith’s head like a wave over rocks ahead of a hurricane, and his legs buckle underneath him and he falls, crashes to his knees and scares the barely-held-together wits out of Lance, who sets upon him immediately, eases him the rest of the way down, into his lap, legs stretched out.

“It’s okay, it’s okay, I’ve got you,” Lance says quickly, though Keith thinks he might be reassuring himself more than anything as he cradles Keith’s head and clutches his hand.

He must take a glance at the previously-white armor on his thighs, must see fresh red stains, no matter how small, because his face pales a little bit, and he carefully maneuvers Keith until he’s sitting upright, enough so Lance can get a good look at his lower back.

“It’s not bad,” Keith says automatically.

Lance winces, but sighs. “It…could be worse. A lot worse.” He swallows. “We’ve really gotta start incorporating the med kits into the suits. Bandage dispensers, disinfectant…”

Lance goes quiet, chews on the corner of his lower lip in concentration. As soon as his fingers make even light contact with a few of the apparently-many cuts on Keith’s back, Keith hisses.

“Sorry, sorry,” Lance mumbles half-absently. “Just checking them out. We’ve gotta properly clean these, there’s definitely dirt here…”

Keith knows the moment Lance’s head swivels and eyes land on Red, because he takes in a sharp breath, stills. He holds tighter to Keith’s hand, and after a moment: “I…you said it was bad and that Red wasn’t responding, but…this…”

Lance’s legs twitch, and Keith understands. He moves aside, and Lance gets to his feet and insists on pulling Keith up after him, insists on sliding an arm around his waist and apologizing for every time his arm brushes up against exposed skin. Keith just goes with it anyway and bears it, grits his teeth and tries to pretend like this’ll all go away soon.

He’s not the important one right now, anyway.

Keith can walk all on his own, but savors the feeling of Lance supporting his half of his weight, savors Lance taking his arm and draping it over his shoulders and then holding it in place by gripping his wrist.

_Isn_ _’t it nice, having someone fend for you?_

There has to be balance; the universe gave him one of the worst situations it could muster, and finally told him _you don_ _’t have to go this one alone._

They make the walk to Red. Lance takes it slowly for Keith’s sake, even though Keith could probably get there at a normal speed without collapsing again. Maybe. Hopefully. And they stop before Red’s head. Here, Keith sees plainly the giant tear from Red’s eye down to his jaw and then up to his ear. Plenty of space for several Paladins to be thrown to the wind at once.

And that’s not even the worst of it.

Tears on the hull are longer, deeper, metal peeling back like old wallpaper. One leg is bent entirely the wrong way and almost snapped clean off, Red’s tail is in pieces, and his claws are bent and warped almost like corkscrews. It’s like the worst kind of car accident Keith has ever seen, and part of him doesn’t know how he escaped without at least a broken bone.

“ _Oh,_ Red…”

Lance lets Keith go and closes the rest of the distance, one hand flying up to cover his mouth and the other shaking, tentatively reaching out to touch Red’s nose, half-buried in the ground among the gouges ripped through the ground in the crash. Keith steps over them to follow Lance, places a hand on his shoulder for comfort and balance.

They don’t have anyone to blame but the Galra for this. The Galra, and the swarm of unmarked, unaffiliated ships that leapt into battle—space pirates, bounty hunters, adrenaline junkies. Every single one another wrench in their battle tactics and maneuvers.

_Who are the enemies? Who are the spectators? Are there any civilians that may unwittingly or unwillingly be aboard these ships? Who_ are _these people, anyway?_

Remembering that helps Keith from blaming himself. He still does, partly—Red is the fastest Lion. He’s supposed to be the fastest pilot. He’s chased thieves through asteroid fields, space princes with his tech shot to shit, Galra fighters through some of the worst basically-obstacle courses he’s ever seen. But if he’d escaped the wormhole, what would he have done, left behind on the battlefield, surrounded by the enemy, away from his team?

_It_ _’s not your fault._

Keith knows that.

He doesn’t think Lance does.

So Keith whispers it to him, just in case.

“I-I know,” Lance whispers back, rather unconvincingly.

He lingers a long time in front of Red, head dropping, eyes closing. And Keith doesn’t know what else to do but take up the hand that’s fallen back down to his side, and rest his free one on Red’s nose, next to Lance’s.

The Lions can do amazing things on their own; even more amazing things when they connect with the Paladins. But this is something that can’t be fixed with concentration and quintessence. This will take a long time of tinkering, planning, working, fixing. This is something beyond Keith’s capabilities, something beyond Lance’s. They’re not unfamiliar with mechanics, but it’s far from their forte, and far from a job for one or two or even three or four people.

It dawns on Keith then that they may be trapped here for a long, long time.

Especially if Black is anywhere nearly as badly beaten-up as Red.

“Keith, what are we gonna do?”

Nine times out of ten, Keith defers to Lance. He’s the planner, the improviser, the adapter. It’s why Blue took him first, Keith thinks. And it’s why he managed to slip so seamlessly into his place in Red. And why the Black Lion finally told Keith his time was up, no matter how hard he tried to fulfill Shiro’s wishes.

_Ten percent is not insignificant._

Keith buries his rising nausea and panic and squeezes Lance’s hand.

“I don’t know, but we’ll figure it out.”

* * *

Lance promises to take Keith to see Black later, something sorrowful crossing his expression. For now, though, they hole up at the edge of the hill Lance slid down, where the rocks aren’t so many, where patches of grass shoot up between pebbles and mud. Lance recovers their helmets while Keith settles in, and Lance insists that Keith rest.

“I’ll take watch,” Lance says, popping his helmet back on. “You need the rest more than I do.”

He’s not wrong, and Keith has no energy to argue. So he lets Lance take off his armor, leaving him in just the flightsuit. Lance keeps his own armor on—Keith makes him swear that they’ll switch places after a few hours, reminds him that he’s just as deserving of a little comfort and rest. And Lance just nods, equally as exhausted, and Keith lies down. His head rests in Lance’s lap, and even gloved, Lance’s fingers take to his hair.

“Get some sleep, Samurai. I’ll be right here.”

Because as anxious as he is, as tense as his muscles are, as much as he itches to move and itches to do _something_ and start trying to find a solution, he won’t leave Keith alone.

“Wake me if you need me,” Keith responds in a tired mumble.

And then Keith’s out like a light, and it’s just Lance.

Just. Lance.

Because Black’s long since stopped responding, ever since that first and last whisper of air in Lance’s chest when they initially crashed, and Red’s gone, too. Well, no, not gone-gone—Lance thinks he would know if one of the Lions gave out and died, if they…can die? They’re sentient, he knows that, and can move on their own free will, so he guesses they can die, too. And he can—he can still _feel_ _something_ there. It’s weak, it hurts when Lance reaches out, but it still exists.

And it’s enough, at least, for Lance to allow himself a few hours of sitting with Keith and keeping watch—a few hours of rest for himself, even though it’s not sleep, and he’ll need to sleep eventually. He hasn’t slept since the crash, and that was…

Lance wracks his brain.

Comes up with something like twenty-eightish hours ago.

Then he remembers that there was a mission before that, and he’d been awake before that, and that brings it to closer to thirty-six hours.

A full day and a half without closing his eyes.

He hasn’t done something this severe since that marathon study weekend back in the Garrison, when he pulled a whopping fifty-seven hours without sleep before wiping out in the middle of the cafeteria and waking up in the infirmary with a head cold. Back then, he wasn’t running himself ragged against hostile aliens and being blown out of the sky. He’ll need actual sleep soon. No sleep means slip-ups means danger, for himself and for Keith.

Lance looks down at him again. Before, he intended to let Keith sleep and use the time to start scrounging around for supplies. He’d make his way as best he could into the cargo holds in the Lions and salvage whatever remained, then start scouting for food and water. He wouldn’t stray too far; he’d keep Keith within earshot and eyesight, mostly. But if he moves now he might wake Keith up, and if he leaves and Keith wakes up while he’s gone, then Keith’ll probably freak out. Panic. Possibly assume the worst: that Lance has been taken, or that Lance has abandoned him.

_Never,_ Lance thinks resolutely, as he continues threading fingers through Keith’s hair. Not here, not on the battlefield, not in the midst of a nightmare or anxiety attack or mental breakdown or what have you, nowhere.

Keith could walk directly into the fiery pits of hell, and Lance would be at his side regardless.

_Not convinced we haven_ _’t already been there_. Lance snorts at his own thought, bitterly. His dreams of being a fighter pilot generally entailed being shot at, at one point or another, but they didn’t involve walking through walls of flame or being chased by bounty hunters or facing environmental extremes that would give even the most dire sci-fi flicks a run for their money.

It’s his own fault, for walking into an alien spacecraft.

His biggest regret isn’t that he did it, although some days the regret is overwhelming, crushing, suffocating. No, his biggest regret is that he led the others to the forefront of a war. His own recklessness put Shiro, Hunk, Pidge, and Keith into a daily showdown between life and death and gave them an experience they’ll probably never recover from, no matter the outcome of the war. No matter if they survive and live to their hundreds, or if—

_No, no, don_ _’t go there, stop that._

Entertaining that alternative will lead to a mental spiral, and Lance doesn’t have the energy or emotional capacity to deal with it alone right now. So he passes the next few hours examining the most immediate problems, instead.

One: they need food and water. First and foremost, they need sustenance to give them energy to do whatever they have to do.

Two: they’re going to need to find shelter. Lance won’t kid himself with the idea that this is all just temporary, and just like the situation when he was stuck on the mermaid planet with Hunk, they’ll be rescued after another day or so. Lance knows on every level that this situation is going to be long and grueling and painful.

Three: they’ve got to find a way to fix their Lions. Even if by some miracle the rest of the team shows up in Lions somehow in pristine condition, they don’t have the castle. The other Lions will only be able to get so far carrying Red and Black, and while Red’s on the smaller side, and might be less of an issue, Black is without a doubt their biggest Lion, with the second-strongest armor, after Yellow.

_Food and water. Shelter. Fixing the Lions._

Lance repeats it over and over, as he slowly plots out the next few days, once Keith’s injuries are taken care of. Once he sleeps.

_Sleep. Wake up. Get to work._

**Author's Note:**

> "eileen why did it end there" i'm trying to keep all these abc oneshots ~~mostly~~ consistent in word count 
> 
> i like. highkey will probably continue this one in another prompt
> 
> and speaking of abc oneshots being continued...there is a continuation of another abc oneshot coming down the pipeline for prompt L...keep an eye out once i, j, and k get posted
> 
> also i is hopefully coming soon i'm almost done with it (i think)/might also leave that one off to be continued, i'm still debating
> 
> but anyway!!! see y'all later
> 
> if u wanna see what else i'm doing in the meantime/see what else i've done before:  
> [stealing our own place in the sun (aka the fix-it fic, with seasons 4 and 5 now fully completed)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15900732/chapters/37059441) | [deceit so natural (my first-ever voltron fics, a completed trilogy that canon ripped off 50 times)](https://archiveofourown.org/series/767406) | [my twitter account (i moved accounts last week so make sure you double-check that you're following ;^) )](https://twitter.com/astralscrivener)


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